Exotic Tastes

It was my idea to go to Kenya and sleep in white tents on the Serengeti, but Lee thought it would be more interesting to cross the Sahara, so we did both. We started out in Nairobi with a little yellow canvas tent, but by the time we hit the desert, the skin of our little abode was ripped to shreds from the sandstorms that appeared every afternoon.

For a week or two, Lee stitched it like a prizefighter’s corner man, but after a while there wasn’t enough material left to pull together, so we gave it up and cocooned in our sleeping bags, zipping ourselves inside while the storm raged for an hour or two above our heads. We were like the desert beetles burrowed beneath the sand.

We traveled in a British transport truck from Sudan to Agadez, a brown city of square mud buildings, and got lost crossing the Tanezrouft in Algeria before finally popping up like Alice from the rabbit hole in Fez, which, after weeks and weeks of seeing nothing but endless expanses of desert and the occasional caravan of blue Bedouins, seemed as cosmopolitan as Paris.

Having eaten canned food and drunk nothing but warm muddy well water for over a month, the first thing we did in Morocco was find a restaurant. Lee told the waiter to bring her something sensual to drink. The poor man had no idea what she was talking about.

“Madam?”

“A drink,” she said, wiping her brow with a soiled bandanna. “Anything but tepid water or weak tea.”

The waiter brought her almond-flavored milk, which she drank in one gulp. And then another. And another. She couldn’t drink them fast enough. And over the next two or three days she ordered them wherever we went. The almond milks soothed her parched psyche, and even today the vanilla smell of almonds makes me think of a cool oasis, of the most simple--but fulfilling--of hedonistic pleasures.

That’s the way it was the other night when I suggested we grab a quick bite to eat. “No,” she said. “I want something voluptuous.”

That’s the word she used: voluptuous.

Well, there aren’t many voluptuous cuisines out there. I would say Mexican is sybaritic and Chinese is virtuous, but the only voluptuous contender would be Persian. You know, that whole Scheherazade-1,001 nights-belly-dancing-thing.

It’s a cuisine with familiar ingredients--rice, chicken, yogurt--blended in sensual ways. Like their yogurt drink, dugh (which is sometimes spelled “dough” in English). The basics--yogurt, water or club soda, mint--are nothing special. But it’s the small additions--savory or pennyroyal and salt and pepper to taste--that make this drink, which is usually served over ice, so unusual.

When we think of cold yogurt drinks, we think of smoothie-like concoctions made sweet with honey or orange juice or blended strawberries. But dugh, which is meant to hold up against the fatty mouth-feel of lamb, gives you the equal surprises of cold watery yogurt mixed with cleansing mint and sage. It is, as I said, voluptuous.

There are a number of well-known Persian eateries in Orange County such as Darya in South Coast Plaza Village, which is huge and glitzy with its chandeliers and faux-French decor, but we were looking for something smaller and more intimate and ended up at the Red Hat Restaurant in a strip mall in Tustin.

There is a bit of a Scheherazade story behind the name of the restaurant. The tale goes that a young Persian woman fell in love with a married man. They decide to run off together, and she tells him she will wait for him in front of a particular cafe dressed all in red, from her dress to her veiled hat. But the man does not show. And the young girl, heartbroken, continues to go to the same restaurant every night for years hoping he will eventually return to her. Perhaps this was the original inspiration for “An Affair to Remember.”

In any case, Lee did not wear a red hat. She wore her black porkpie and a red scarf. She ordered a dugh to go with our appetizer of borani, kashk bademjan and dolmeh. The dolmeh--grape leaves stuffed with ground beef, rice, split peas, tarragon and other herbs--matched the fragrant yogurt drink perfectly. Like a mealy pate

with a fresh Beaujolais.

There is not much to say about the decor of the Red Hat. It is as boring as a dentist’s office, as unromantic (despite the name) as a pair of practical shoes. But the food--the food is different. It makes you chew slowly. It makes you close your eyes. You eat the velvety smooth dolmeh and the saffron-infused lamb and it is as satisfying as anything experienced outside of a bedroom.

Lee, as is her wont, didn’t bother with the menu. “You have something unusual?” she asked the waitress.

“Of course.”

“Something. . . “

“Yes?”

“Something that Eve might have served to Adam on their last night in Eden? Something sensual, perhaps.”

“Ah.”

The waitress smiled and nodded and then ran off to the kitchen, where we could hear her speaking excitedly in Persian to the cook. What emerged a short time later was something dense, unexpected and voluptuous: shirin polo. Fragrant basmati rice topped with an unusual mixture of walnuts and crystallized orange peel, pistachios and onions, and thinly sliced almonds and chunks of saffron-infused chicken. It was like a single-plate buffet, a dish full of conflicting tastes from the grainy walnuts that puckered the mouth to the sweet orange flavored coating that opened up the twice-cooked basmati rice.

We ate without talking.

When we were done, we flung ourselves back in our chairs, satiated and pleased.

“That was incredible,” Lee said, smiling at me.

“It was, wasn’t it?” I said.

We could not move. We closed our eyes and rested. Eventually the waitress came by and asked if we had gotten what we wanted. We had. Would you like something else? she asked.

I was spent, but Lee had a little gleam in her eye. She leaned over the table and touched my hand. “How about the rose water ice cream?” she said. “Will you try it with me?”

How could I say no? It was as simple as almond-flavored milk--but just as exotic and delightful. When we finished, we ordered another. Afterward, Lee said she badly wanted a cigarette, even though she doesn’t smoke.

Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. and 5-9 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday, 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m.

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David Lansing’s column is published on Fridays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.